This could be a libertarian tech revolution-or the dawn of a new crypto order. But follow the tendrils of money and influence out from the Kremlin and you reach Putin’s real crucibles of cryptocurrency-the gray zones on the edges of his expanding sphere of influence, where the electricity is abundant, the regimes subservient, and the links back to his regime fuzzy.
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There is also evidence that the Kremlin itself has been dabbling in cryptocurrencies for a while: In July 2018, amid the investigation on Russian influence in the 2016 US presidential election, Robert Mueller indicted 12 agents with the GRU, the Russian military’s intelligence arm, some of whom had mined bitcoin in Romania and used it to pay the hackers who stole Hillary Clinton’s emails as well as the registration fee for the website where they posted the messages just weeks before election day.Īfter having left the fledgling industry in limbo for years, the Russian parliament finally legislated on cryptocurrencies in October. Several oligarchs have invested in cryptocurrencies, which could help them hedge their bets against against future sanctions. Gazprom, Russia’s giant gas corporation, has announced it will start using blockchain contracts.
But Putin actually understands that the future of Russia as a sovereign state is an issue of improving new technologies.” He believes that Russia has no future without it,” says Vladislav Ginko, an economics expert at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Four months later, though, Putin had changed his mind, denouncing cryptocurrencies as a “gift to criminals.” The head of the Russian central bank also changed tack, saying they were “the definition of a pyramid scheme.”īut Kremlin insiders say Putin remains interested-and that the Russian state is experimenting. Immediately, analysts told Vice, the Russian state development and central banks both launched blockchain projects. In June 2017, Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian whiz kid developer of the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, reportedly managed to convince Putin of blockchain’s charms during a chance meeting at a conference. In Moscow, which is roiling under Western sanctions even if its glossy central streets don’t show it, Vladimir Putin flip-flops between publicly supporting cryptocurrencies and outright trashing them. Subscribe to WIRED and stay smart with more of your favorite longform writers. There are Russian peacekeepers, brutalist statues, streets named after communist heroes, and a steady stream of sightseers snapping shots of them all. Kuchurgan sits not far from the blast site, just inside Transnistria, a wholly unrecognized quasi-state slivered between Moldova and Ukraine and marketed by its tourist board as the place where the USSR never ended.
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Recently the station and its adjoining town-planned to Soviet perfection-has been a stop on the nostalgia tours that have boomed across eastern Europe off the back of the HBO series Chernobyl. Today, its red and white striped smokestacks still loom over the surrounding cornfields, making ants of the workers who file out at quitting time. In Soviet times, the Kuchurgan electricity plant powered a swath of the empire from Romania to Ukraine.
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.Īt the edge of a lake on a fault line of the new Cold War stands a building that, depending on how you look at it, is either a relic of a failed revolution or the beating heart of a new one.
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